When my washing machine suddenly bit the dust a couple weeks ago, I felt helpless. I had lots of clothes to wash.
As I sat there defeated, my mind ranged over my lifetime of “laundry moments.”
Long, long ago, when my siblings and I would wake up mornings, we’d sprawl under the bed covers and wait to hear Ma’s voice yelling up the stairs: “You kids get up! Time for school!” But sometimes, we’d forget it was a Saturday morning. Then soon, we’d hear Ma’s Maytag wash machine doing its sloshy swish-swash from the kitchen. We kids would shout: “Saturday! No school! Hooray!”
Ma loved doing laundry. She would hum and sing merrily on Saturday wash-day mornings. We kids thought she was crazy. Who in their right mind would like doing laundry?! And she loved to iron clothes while listening to soap operas on the radio. Then we knew for sure she was crazy. Ironing? AND soap operas?!
But I grew to appreciate that crazy mama. As a college student, I’d bring my dirty clothes over to her, and she was so happy she had laundry – anybody’s laundry – to do. Crazy but helpful.
For almost all of my life I lived in apartments or even a house or two that had no laundry facilities. So I had to put my piles of clothes in baskets and drive them to laundromats. Every time I dreaded it. I hated laundromats – those boring waiting rooms to Hell, sitting there staring at tuna-fish-can ashtrays as I heard my clothes going slosh-slosh in the machine for a small eternity.
And when finally the clothes were washed and dried, another dreaded moment fell: folding time. I tended to fold T-shirts in six or seven ways, and my attempts to fold “fitted” sheets would tangle me up every time. Quite often, old ladies across the room would observe me in my folding gyrations and start giggling at that doofus over there who must have been born yesterday.
Why, I often wondered, didn’t high schools offer classes called Laundry 101 or Advanced Folding 202?
When I moved to this new double-wide mobile home exactly 20 years ago, the seller said I had a choice of washer-and-dryer or air conditioner. In a millisecond I practically shouted: Washer-Dryer! I was elated by the thought of no more slogging trips to laundromats.
When I met my next-door neighbors, Richard and Martha, I soon discovered Martha loved doing laundry more than Ma did. She loved nothing more than to hang out damp clothes on her outdoor clothes lines in spring, summer, fall. Oh my goodness! Another crazy woman! Even crazier than Ma.
Throughout the years, next-door Martha would give me laundry advice – washing tips, showing me how to properly fold clothes – even fitted sheets. But even she had trouble, struggling with those dumb things!
After more than a week, my laundry piled up, undone, sweat-sour, next to the dead washing machine. One day, just as I was about to go to St. Cloud to check out machines, I was stunned to learn sister Mary and two nieces (Aleah and Brittany) had decided to buy me one. An early Christmas present, they said.
Brother-in-law Kurt, a mechanical wizard, picked it up at Best Buy, brought it over, removed the old one and installed the new one. I was happy (no laundromats!), but I stood there staring at its control panel.
“What the heck do all those buttons mean?” I asked.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said, then gave me a quick tutorial. And lo and behold, it worked; it worked much better than the one that died did.
Martha popped over and gave that machine a look of longing envy.
“I wish I had one like that.”
Right away I started thinking that when I win the lottery I will buy her one and then she can wash, dry and fold to her heart’s content, happily ever after. Crazy but happy.
